Cavaliers prevail in overtime
By Jeff White
Published: December 29, 2008

On the road, against a basketball team that's owned them in recent years, the Virginia Cavaliers trailed in the final minute of regulation.

They trailed again in overtime. The final score is the only one that counts, however, and when the horn sounded for the last time last night, U.Va. celebrated an improbable 88-84 victory over Georgia Tech.

"We're first place in the ACC, so that means a lot," said junior forward Jamil Tucker, whose 3-pointer with 14.7 seconds left in regulation sent the game into overtime.

The Cavaliers (1-0, 6-4) may not hold that distinction for long, of course, but they were understandably elated after one of their more memorable victories in four seasons under Dave Leitao. For the first in more than 25 years, U.Va. has posted back-to-back wins over Georgia Tech in Atlanta.

In overtime, a three-point play by freshman Sylven Landesberg put Virginia ahead 84-82 with 67 seconds remaining. A botched exchange between Landesberg and Tucker led to a Gani Lawal dunk that pulled Georgia Tech (0-1, 7-4) even with 15.2 seconds left, but the Wahoos weren't fazed.

A season ago, Calvin Baker's 3-pointer in the final seconds had lifted Virginia to a rare victory at Alexander Memorial Coliseum. The junior guard slayed the Jackets again last night.

After Lawal's basket, Baker took a pass from point guard Sammy Zeglinski in the backcourt and looked toward the U.Va. bench. When he saw that Leitao didn't want a timeout, Baker streaked toward the basket, catching the Jackets off guard. His layup dropped through with 10.2 seconds left to make it 86-84.

Georgia Tech guard Lewis Clinch missed a jumper at the other end, and U.Va. forward Mike Scott was fouled after grabbing his 10th rebound. Scott coolly hit two free throws with 1.9 seconds to play to close out the scoring.

Most of the 7,230 fans went home unhappy. But it would have virtually impossible to find anyone not impressed by Landesberg's performance. The phrase "freshman phenom" gets overused, but the 6-6 swingman from New York City may qualify.

Landesberg, who chose U.Va. over Georgia Tech, totaled 26 points, six rebounds, five assists and only one turnover in 41 minutes last night.

"I was real pumped," he said. "This is what I came to this school for: to play ACC. It's like a dream come true."

Asked about Landesberg, his coach said, "He's good." Leitao smiled before adding, "As much as anything, he's got a poise about him. I don't think he knew the difference between a Friday night in Queens, New York, and a Sunday afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia."

The taller, more athletic Jackets trailed by seven at the break but opened the second half with a 9-0 run. With three minutes in regulation, Georgia Tech led 69-64 and seemed in control. In the end, though, the Jackets' struggles at the foul line -- they were 16 for 33 -- proved decisive.

Freshman point guard Iman Shumpert finished with 18 points, but his two missed foul shots with 36.2 seconds left in regulation gave U.Va., which trailed 72-69, a reprieve.

Landesberg quickly scored. Clinch's two free throws pushed the Jackets' lead back to three, but Tucker's trey made it 74-74. Tucker then challenged Shumpert's jumper with 2 seconds to play, and when Landesberg came down with the rebound, the teams headed to overtime.

Tucker tied his career high with 15 points and added six rebounds in 24 minutes off the bench. Another U.Va. reserve, sophomore guard Mustapha Farrakhan, scored a career-high 12 points, breaking the mark of 10 he'd set in his previous game.

"I'm just going out there and being aggressive," Farrakhan said.

 

Cavs open ACC play with a win
UVa rallies in the last three minutes of regulation to force a successful OT. 4 decks.
Doug Doughty doug.doughty@roanoke.com

ATLANTA -- What did Georgia Tech ever do to Virginia?

In their last four meetings in the two major men's sports, all as the host team, the Yellow Jackets have lost three times and had a fourth game postponed by a leaky roof.

On Sunday, Tech probably would have taken another roof collapse.

On the same floor where he hit a game-winning 3-pointer last February, UVa junior Calvin Baker made the go-ahead layup with 9 seconds remaining Sunday as the Cavaliers prevailed 88-84 in overtime.

"It wasn't as hard a shot," Baker said, "but it felt just as good."

The Cavaliers, who entered the ACC opener as 7 12-point underdogs, trailed by five points with under three minutes remaining in regulation but sent the game into overtime on a 3-pointer by Jamil Tucker with 15 seconds left.

Virginia (6-4 overall, 1-0 ACC) saw the Yellow Jackets take the lead on three occasions in overtime before Cavaliers freshman Sylven Landesberg converted a three-point play to give them an 84-82 lead with 1:07 remaining.

Some would have called it an "old-fashioned" 3-pointer, a label that has been used for many aspects of Landesberg's game.

"There's always going to be some doubters," said Landesberg, a 6-foot-6, 205-pounder from Flushing, N.Y. "People said it was going to be a totally different game when we got to the ACC, but this is what I came to school for."

Landesberg played 41 minutes and finished with a game-high 26 points, six rebounds and five assists.

"He's good," UVa coach Dave Leitao said with emphasis. "As much as anything, he's got a poise about him. I don't think he knew the difference between a Friday night in Queens, N.Y., and a Sunday afternoon in Atlanta, Ga."

Landesberg was charged with one turnover, that coming with 17 seconds remaining in overtime. Landesberg got tangled up with Tucker and Gani Lawal swooped in for a steal that he turned into a dunk that made it 84-84.

The Cavaliers quickly inbounded the ball to Sammy Zeglinski, who directed it to Baker near the midcourt stripe.

"The first thing I did was look at coach Leitao to see if he wanted to call a timeout," Baker said. "He made a motion with his hand that told me to keep going. I saw they were scrambling to get back, so, fast as I could, I tried to get to the basket and either put up the shot or get fouled."

Earlier in the overtime, Baker had been called for an offensive foul that wiped out a go-ahead layup, but there was no Georgia Tech player to meet him on his final move. Georgia Tech's Gani Lawal left the big man he was covering but was too late.

"It definitely brought back some memories when we came in here [Saturday] for our shootaround," Baker said. "The Georgia Tech coaches had just gotten done with their practice and even they mentioned it."

As opposed to Virginia, which was a preseason choice for 12th out of 12 ACC teams, the Yellow Jackets (7-4, 1-0) were an eighth-place pick with heightened expectations. They dominated the backboards Sunday, collecting 20 offensive rebounds, but an old shortcoming came back to haunt them.

The Yellow Jackets, who were shooting an ACC-low 59.9 percent from the free-throw line through 10 games, made only 16 of their 33 free throws Sunday. Late in the game, that entered into Leitao's strategy.

"Obviously, I didn't want to give them easy baskets," he said. "I thought we fouled them too much early, but late, I knew there were going to be a lot of possessions left if we could make baskets and try to get them to the line."

Lawal, who finished with a team-high 21 points and nine rebounds, was the only Georgia Tech player to convert as many as half of his free throws (9 for 14). Guards Lewis Clinch and Iman Shumpert contributed 18 apiece, but Tech got only five points from its bench.

For Virginia, substitutes Tucker and Mustapha Farrakhan had 15 and 12 points, respectively. It tied a career high for Tucker and represented Farrakhan's second career high in as many games.

Leitao described it as "a terrific game," but would-be television viewers will have to take his word for it. Although the game was part of the ACC's Sunday night package, it was not shown live in most Virginia outlets.

The Cavaliers will gladly take the win over the exposure.

 

Jackets fall to Cavaliers in overtime
By LARRY HARTSTEIN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, December 28, 2008

Georgia Tech made fewer than half its free throws, didn’t get back on defense in critical moments and failed to get the ball inside down the stretch.

Those shortcomings nullified an inspired second-half effort as the Jackets men’s basketball team lost its ACC opener, 88-84 in overtime to Virginia.
 
Tech (7-4) had plenty of chances to put away the Cavaliers (6-4). Instead, it lost another heartbreaker: Tech’s last six ACC home losses have come by a total of 12 points.

The biggest lapse came with 14 seconds left in overtime, after Gani Lawal’s steal and dunk tied it at 84.

Virginia’s Sammy Zeglinski passed ahead to Calvin Baker, who drove past the Jackets and hit a short bank shot with nine seconds left.

Lewis Clinch (18 points) missed from the wing with two seconds to go.

“The last play was kind of disappointing,” Tech coach Paul Hewitt said. “We had a guy in front of the ball and he jumped out of the way for some reason at the last minute. Somebody did pick him up, but the kid Baker made a very tough shot in transition.”

The game wouldn’t have gone to overtime if Tech had shot respectably from the foul line. Hitting 16 of 33 marked a new low for a team that came in ranked last in the ACC at 59.9 percent.

Lawal hit 9 of 14, but every other starter hit less than 50 percent.

With under a minute left in regulation, Clinch nailed his third 3-pointer to give Tech a 72-69 lead.

But Iman Shumpert, who tied his career-high with 18 points, missed two free throws that might have iced it.

Following a Sylven Landesberg layup and two Clinch free throws, Tech led 74-71 with 25 seconds left. Jamil Tucker buried a 3-pointer off Landesberg’s pass, and Shumpert missed a baseline fallaway at the buzzer.

Clinch said Tech would have won had it kept pounding the ball inside to Lawal, who had 21 points and nine rebounds.

“It’s tough to take a loss like that,” Clinch said. “We’ve still got a little chemistry problem, knowing where to get the ball down the stretch.”

But Clinch, whose big second half rallied Tech from a 44-37 deficit, remained optimistic about what’s ahead.

“We still have a great basketball team and it’s not the end of the world for us,” he said.

Added Lawal: “We’re a good team so we’re going to learn from this.”

Landesberg, a 6-foot-6 freshman who considered Tech before picking Virginia, led all scorers with 26 points. He had six rebounds, five assists and only one turnover. The Jackets struggled to stay in front of him all night.

It was a huge win for the Cavaliers, who were picked to finish last in the ACC.

“We were able to spread them out offensively and attack,” coach Dave Leitao said. “They made some runs, we made some runs and the last two minutes before overtime, with the game hanging in the balance, some of our guys stepped up.”

Tech hosts Tennessee State at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.
 

Expectations about Tech hoops face reality
By Jeff Schultz | Saturday, December 27, 2008, 04:33 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In October, the team’s best defender and captain was shelved with a spinal condition. In November, the top scorer was declared academically ineligible. Two weeks ago, the starting point guard’s nose predictably lost a collision with somebody’s elbow.

If you are Georgia Tech basketball coach Paul Hewitt, this probably isn’t the backdrop you would have wanted before the Jackets played even their first ACC game of the season. But isn’t that kind of the way things have gone?

As it turns out, a Final Four appearance five years ago didn’t come with guarantees. Go figure.

“We’ve gone to the tournament two of the last four years,” Hewitt said. “Would I have liked to have gone all four years? Sure, but we haven’t. So we’re going to work to get there this year. If we’re judging, ‘Is Georgia Tech basketball doing a good job?’ that’s really not for me to answer. What’s the standard? You can make that standard anything whatever you want. But I believe we’re doing a good job. If you’re asking me — on the court, I think we can do better. But if you judge us a whole and completeness as a program, I think we’ve done a good job.”

This shouldn’t even be an issue. I think I’ve just let too many e-mailers and message-board lunatics get to me. But Hewitt well knows that when a team wins, expectations are raised. When the Jackets advanced to the championship game of the 2004 Final Four, before losing to Connecticut, some folks — fans, media, whomever — apparently perceived that kind of thing would become commonplace.

That hasn’t happened. Tech (7-3), which opens ACC play tonight against Virginia, has reached the tournament twice in the past four years, winning one game. What people don’t talk about are all of those things coaches don’t like to talk about publicly because they come off as whiny excuse factories: injuries, academic casualties, defections to the NBA. Everybody has to deal with those issues, some more than others. Yes, even Duke.

Two tournament appearances in the past four years aren’t up there with North Carolina (four), Duke (four) or Boston College (three). But it beats just about everybody else in the ACC. Only N.C. State also has two.

Four ACC teams reached the tournament last season, and two of them were Miami and Clemson. What does that say about today’s landscape?

Hewitt has felt no heat internally. He shouldn’t. He does it the right way and always has. He raises men, not athletes. He preaches academics. And yes, he can coach. Teams don’t go to the national finals by accident.

“When I recruit, I’ve never said to a player, ‘Come help us win,’ ” Hewitt said. “I tell them to come here to get a great education. Come here and hopefully you can be a good enough basketball player that you can earn a living. I know from experience that winning games for these guys in the long run really means nothing. You have a degree. You have a skill. Our job is to try to help them make the most of those two things.”

The lost art of collegiate athletics.

The college football coaching circus has become the extreme example of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, particularly in the South. Basketball isn’t there yet. But things have moved in that direction.

Hewitt shrugs.

“It’s the coaching business. It’s the way it is. I love my job. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

He likes his team this season. He probably liked it better two months ago. But then: D’Andre Bell, a senior, was diagnosed with spinal stenosis and lost for the season; Lewis Clinch was declared academically ineligible for the fall, mandating he miss the team’s first seven games; point guard Moe Miller suffered a nasal fracture and concussion when he was elbowed in the nose in a loss to Illinois-Chicago on Dec. 14.

But the team is in recovery. Clinch is back, eligible and thriving (three game average: 18.3 points). Miller has missed three games and will miss only a few more.

Expectations? Tech was picked to finish eighth by ACC media members. Perceptions have taken a hit.

But we’ve seen the upside with Hewitt. What happened in 2004 wasn’t an accident.

 

Big early ACC win for Cavs
Calvin Baker hits key OT layup as Virginia pulls out win at Ga. Tech.
Staff and wire service reports
December 29, 2008

ATLANTA - — Virginia's young team earned a huge early road victory Sunday night in its ACC opener.

Former Woodside High star Calvin Baker scored a layup with 10 seconds remaining in overtime to break a tie and help the Cavaliers earn an 88-84 victory over Georgia Tech.

"We had an opportunity to put our first foot forward and earn a share of first place for a while," Virginia coach Dave Leitao said. "I thought we started out very aggressive and if we can push the basketball and get some early opportunities that would be good for us and we did that. It was a terrific game, both teams played well and played to their strengths."

The victory for Virginia (6-4, 1-0 ACC) wasn't put away until Mike Scott hit two free throws with 2 seconds left.

Georgia Tech's Gani Lawal had stolen a pass and scored with 15 seconds left to tie it at 84.

"We are a work in progress," Leitao said. "I see something that hasn't been done with a level of consistency or something you (haven't beeen able to) count on. Because you are on the road, it's the first ACC game with a lot of young guys; we are still piecing everything together. We haven't had the easiest of stretches.

"Hopefully, but there is not any guarantees in this game, we can use this day as a measuring stick," he said. "This is what we did when we got up, this is what we did when we got down and this is where went too mentally and from an execution stand point."

Lewis Clinch gave Georgia Tech a 72-69 lead on a 3-pointer with 50 seconds left in regulation.

"He made a big 3 there coming off the screen," Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt said. "At the end of the game I didn't want to call a timeout because I didn't want to give the defense a chance to get set. We were hoping to get him going to the basket and instead he pulled up for the jumper, but still I think we had a pretty good shot in a one on one situation from a guy who we think can make big shots."

Virginia's Jamil Tucker hit a 3-point basket with 14.7 seconds left in regulation to tie it at 74. Georgia Tech's Shumpert missed a 15-foot jumper with two seconds remaining to send it to overtime.

The Cavaliers' ability to be aggressive on offense made a difference down the stretch.

"The way this team is structured, especially with our younger guys, we are going to be better when we bring the game to you," Leitao said. "We tried to do that later in the game, we started trapping and I think it disrupted them enough to give us some chances."

Sylven Landesberg led Virginia with 26 points.Tucker added 15, Baker had 13 and Mustapha Farrakhan scored a season-high 12 off the bench.

"I look in the guys eyes and I did not think the atmosphere would challenge them more than I do. I take it to them every single day," Leitao said. "Starting in the second half when we gave up the lead very early, the atmosphere and with Clinch attacking the basket was costing us. We weren't rebounding well. At some point, the old bend-but-don't-break mentality came true and they stepped up when they had to. Hopefully, it is a sign that we can build on in the future."

Virginia jumped out to a 10-4 early lead and held a 44-37 halftime edge.

"We thought (Iman Shumpert) he had a height advantage over (Sammy) Zeglinski that he could take advantage of and get into the paint," Hewitt said. "For some reason in the first half, he kept trying to make that extra pass. At halftime we talked about him getting into the painting and shooting over the defenders.

Lawal led the Yellow Jackets (7-4, 0-1 ACC) with 21 points. Clinch and Iman Shumpert added 18 points each for Tech.

 

Young Cavaliers work overtime
By Whitey Reid
Published: December 28, 2008

ATLANTA — Throughout the early portion of the season, groans have sometimes reverberated throughout John Paul Jones Arena when Virginia guard Calvin Baker overdribbles or takes an ill-advised shot.
Just imagine what those same fans were yelling at their televisions when Baker — whose style of play is rarely described as pretty — got the ball in his hands with the game tied and the clock dwindling inside of 10 seconds on Sunday evening.
After Georgia Tech’s Gani Lawal had tied the game on a breakaway dunk, Sammy Zeglinski passed it to Baker who zoomed up the court.
“I looked at coach Leitao to see if he was going to call a timeout or anything and he just said, ‘Push it,’” Baker said, “so I started dribbling up the court with my left hand and I saw that they were scrambling to get back, so I just dribbled as fast as I could to either get fouled or make the layup.
“Lawal was helping off the post player, but he was too late and I got the layup off.”
Baker’s deuce with nine seconds left shocked the home crowd at Alexander Memorial Coliseum and gave Virginia an impressive 88-84 league-opening win.
“I didn’t call a timeout in that last [sequence] because Calvin had a pretty good motor,” said Virginia coach Dave Leitao, “and I had a little bit of a flashback last year to Sean [Singletary] and Calvin.”
Last March, Baker hit a 3-pointer from the wing with 4.2 seconds left to sink the Yellow Jackets. Baker said when he first walked into the arena on Sunday, a couple of Georgia Tech assistant coaches were giving him some good-natured ribbing about it. Safe to say, it won’t be so good-natured when they see Baker next time.
“When I made the layup, I had the same feeling I had last year when I made the shot,” said Baker, who finished with 13 points and five rebounds. “It came right back to me.”
Georgia Tech’s last gasp was an airball jumper from guard Lewis Clinch. After Mike Scott iced the game with two free throws and time expired, Virginia’s players celebrated.
“As I told them, [we] can claim a share of first place for a little while,” said Leitao, grinning. “It was a terrific game. Both teams played hard, well and to their strengths.”
After Landesberg drove hard to the rack for a 3-point play to put Virginia up 84-82 and Clinch missed a jumper at the other end with 46 seconds left, the game seemed like UVa’s to lose.
However, as Landesberg was trying to milk the clock on the ensuing possession, he bumped into teammate Jamil Tucker and fumbled the ball. Lawal picked it up and raced in for a dunk with 14 seconds left.
“I was trying to come off the screen and create something,” said Landesberg, who was once again spectacular, finishing with 26 points, five rebounds and five assists, “but nothing was there and I tried to pull it back out. While I was doing that, Jamil was like walking into my path and we collided.”
Through the early portion of the season, starting strong had been something of a problem for Virginia (6-4, 1-0 ACC). But it wasn’t on Sunday.
All five UVa starters scored at least a bucket as the Cavaliers jumped out to a 17-6 lead.
“We thought if we could push the basketball and get some early opportunities, that would be good for us,” Leitao said.
Virginia went cold, momentarily, as Georgia Tech went was able to tie the game at 24 on a dunk by Lawal (team-high 21 points). However, UVa — behind 14 first-half points from Landesberg and a surprising 10 off the bench from Mustapha Farrakhan — closed the half on a 14-7 spurt to lead 44-37 at the break.
Georgia Tech came out a changed team after the intermission. The Yellow Jackets (7-4, 0-1) opened on a 9-0 run to take a 46-44 lead. At two junctures, they opened up five-point leads, but Virginia kept hanging around.
“Both [Lewis] Clinch and [Iman] Shumpert were attacking us and that was costing us,” Leitao said. “We were a little slow in our rotations. We weren’t rebounding… but at some point, the whole bend-but-don’t-break methodology came true and they stepped up when they really had to.”
With just 15 seconds remaining, Landesberg found Tucker, who drilled a game-tying 3-pointer from the top of the key.
Tech had a final chance to win in regulation but Shumpert, who had missed two free throws on the
previous possession that could have given the Jackets a five-point lead (Tech was an atrocious 16 of 33 from the line for the game), missed a pull-up jumper.
That set the stage for Baker’s overtime heroics.
Leitao, for his part, doesn’t seem to care how uncoventional Baker’s game can seem at times.
“It goes in,” he said. “I don’t care if you kick it in to be honest with you. He’s been unorthodox, but he’s been a pretty good percentage shooter since he’s been here.
“However he shoots it, I’m comfortable with it.”
Dunks
Mustapha Farrakhan had a career-high 12 points off the bench. … Tucker tied his career high of 15 points. … Landesberg scored over 20 points for the sixth time in 10 games. … Georgia Tech outrebounded Virginia, 50-42.
... Sammy Zeglinski’s six rebounds and six assists were both career highs.

 

Tucker makes a leap for Cavaliers
By Jerry Ratcliffe
Published: December 29, 2008

ATLANTA — During this young season, Virginia coach Dave Leitao has been searching for guys to step up their games, to be difference makers. On Sunday evening at Georgia Tech, junior forward Jamil Tucker took that step.
The Cavaliers danced for joy on the Alexander Memorial Coliseum floor after an 88-84 overtime upset over host Georgia Tech. Had it not been for Tucker’s big shot at the end of regulation there may not have been reason to dance.
Down 74-71 with 25 seconds to play, Virginia already knew its plan. During a timeout at the 27 second mark, Leitao called a play named “Phoenix,” that calls for freshman guard Sylven Landesberg to get the ball inside the paint, draw the defense and kick it back out to Tucker on the wing.
Spot-on performance
The Cavs executed the play just the way Leitao drew it up during the timeout. Landesberg got the ball inside and spotted Tucker open on the perimeter.
“I just followed directions,” said Tucker, who nailed the huge 3-pointer with 14 seconds showing to knot the game at 74-all, eventually sending the game into the extra period. “Sylven got to the hole like he always does and he just found me in an open spot.”
It was just one of several successful shots by Tucker in the game. For the record, he connected on 6 of 7 field goal attempts, all three of his attempts from Bonusphere, to tie his career high of 15 points.
Praise all around for Tucker
“That was a big shot Jamil hit,” said Landesberg, who scored a game-high 26 points. “That shot just took all the air out of the gym, all the energy out of the gym. Jamil is a great shooter, so I knew as soon as he went up that it was good. He doesn’t shoot a whole lot, but when he does it’s almost a guarantee.”
Ditto that thought from Leitao.
“If you line him up behind the arc and give him an open jump shot, I feel very comfortable that he’s going to make it,” the coach said of Tucker.
Why not? Tucker has made nearly 41 percent of his 3-point attempts during his first two years at Virginia, and an even higher percentage (45.3) of them during ACC regular season games.
However, what has gained the Gary, Ind., native four consecutive starts lately isn’t necessarily his shooting ability, but how he has worked hard to contribute in other ways.
“For Jamil, it’s not about making shots,” Leitao said.
“I know he can do that. He’s done that since he’s been here. It’s about his consistency in all other areas.”
The coach said he challenges Tucker daily during practice to play better defense, to rebound, to use his big body in a more physical way. Leitao said that he can’t predict whether or not Tucker will have a good shooting game every outing, but would like to be confident that he can consistently contribute in all the other areas aforementioned. That is what Leitao is looking for and what Tucker is starting to deliver.
“If I can just lockdown on defense and take care of my responsibilities there, my offense will come,” Tucker said. “I know I’m going to be able to shoot, but defensive rebounding is something I need to work on.”
Defense is what earns players floor time in Leitao’s system. Play it well and the world is yours. Play matador-style defense and feel free to sit and watch.
Tucker knows that’s his weak spot and shows up at practice daily with a mental checklist of defensive items he needs to take care of. It’s always on his mind.
The whole physical thing is a big deal, too. Back at West Side High in Gary, Tucker was the biggest guy on the floor most of the time. At 6-foot-9, 245 or 250 pounds, the rebounds came easy. So did everything else.
In the ACC, a land inhabited by numerous wide bodies and physical beasts, it hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park.
“For the first or second year, I wasn’t the most physical player and having the size that I do, it would be a waste if I didn’t use it,” Tucker admitted. “I understand totally what the coach is saying. At my size, I should be able to get down there and do the things that any other big man in the league would do.”
Now that he’s willing to mix it up a bit, Tucker is becoming a more complete player, the kind of guy that Leitao can rely on night in and night out.
He came up big against the Yellow Jackets, as did guards Calvin Baker (13 points, including the game-winner) and Mustapha Farrakhan (12 points).
The result was Virginia’s third straight win over Tech and second straight on the Jackets’ home court, nicknamed the “Thrillerdome.”
While it would be easy to say the game could be a turning point in Tucker’s career, he believes it was more so that for the Virginia team.
“Us coming together in overtime and being a young team, that’s definitely sending us in the right direction,” Tucker said. “It gives us all confidence.”
Tucker wouldn’t take much credit for his success though.
“Our guard play is helping me,” Tucker said. “Those guys are getting into the holes and that leaves me wide open. All I have to do is knock it down. I think it’s 80 percent them and 20 percent me.”
Whatever the numbers, Leitao will take it. His work-in-progress showed good signs as the baby steps got a little bigger.

 

Cavaliers romp past Rider in Classic
By Jay Jenkins
Published: December 29, 2008

Lyndra Littles received a belated Christmas present Sunday.
Virginia’s star forward scored an autograph from legendary basketball standout Teresa Witherspoon, her childhood idol, inside John Paul Jones Arena.
Hours later, Littles and No. 16 Virginia delivered a present for the 3,000 fans in attendance at the Cavalier Classic with a sizzling, opening-day 83-38 victory over Rider in the four-team event.
The easy win improves Virginia to 10-2 and sets up a championship game tonight at 7 with Louisiana Tech, where Witherspoon serves as the associate head coach. The Lady Techsters opened the event with an 83-62 win over Maryland-Baltimore County.
Advancing to the title game never appeared in question for the Cavaliers.
In fact, Virginia took a double-digit lead with 10:09 left in the opening half on a layup by Enonge Stovall and never looked back, closing out the first half on a 23-4 run to take a commanding 48-19 lead.
“We had a good start tonight and we were fairly well prepared mentally and physically,” Virginia coach Debbie Ryan said. “We had a little more pop in our step, and I was able to play a lot of people.”
The Cavaliers, who got 16 points from Littles in the opening half, forced Rider to self-destruct with 21 turnovers before halftime arrived. Those miscues led to 23 points for UVa.
“Rider handled our pressure fairly well in the first half but we wore them down a little bit, which made life a little bit easier because we were able to steal the ball so much and score easily,” Ryan said. “If we had to play a half-court game it would have been different.
“We were able to steal the ball a lot, which gave us some separation really early in the game.”
Virginia was just as relentless in the opening stages of the second half, pushing its advantage to 47, at 74-27, just eight minutes into the session.
“I didn’t want them to think that the game was over [at halftime],” Ryan said. “It is very possible for that to happen if you get caught up in that. It is a phenomenon that happens in athletics when you think the game is over and the other team just plays the game and the ‘just-plays team’ comes back and beats you.
“It happens all the time so you have to focused and play your game.”
With the large cushion, Ryan spread out the playing time to allow all 10 players that saw action to log at least 15 minutes.
The win delivered a message to the coaching staff. In their previous game on Dec. 21, the Cavaliers’ provided a lackluster effort in a narrow win over Mount St. Mary’s that landed three starters on the bench in the second half.
“We did what we were supposed to from the jump … and I think that shows the character and the maturity of this team to be able to recognize that we didn’t take care of what we needed to take care in the first half [against Mount St. Mary’s],” Littles said. “We came out sluggish in that game, and then to have a couple of days off for Christmas break and to come back and focus and do everything that our coaches wanted to do, I think, was great.”
Monica Wright, despite playing just 23 minutes, scored a game-high 22 points and registered six of Virginia’s 18 steals. Whitny Edwards and Chelsea Shine added 12 and 11 points respectively for the Cavaliers, who hit 25 of their 37 free throw attempts and won the rebounding battle 52-30.
Prior to their victory, Virginia was able to watch Louisiana Tech from the stands to get an in-person scouting report for tonight’s title game.
The Cavaliers watched as the Lady Techsters (7-4) exploded in the second half, outscoring UMBC 44-26 to register the 21-point victory.
“You engage more when you are actually there,” Littles said of the viewing. “You can say, ‘hey, she’s a shooter’ or ‘she only uses her right hand’ as opposed to sitting in a dark room staring at film.
“It is always better to be able to be there and see them.”
Layups ...
Virginia forward Britny Edwards dressed but did not play in the game. Ryan said the rookie was battling a stomach virus. ... The rehab process for center Aisha Mohammed is progressing, Ryan confirmed, and the training staff has set the target date for her return — Jan. 2 against Georgia. ... Virginia’s five bench players outscored Rider 39-38.

 

AJC investigation: Many athletes lag far behind on SAT scores
By MIKE KNOBLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, December 28, 2008

Football and men’s basketball players on the nation’s big-time college teams averaged hundreds of points lower on their SATs than their classmates, and some of the gaps are so large they call into question the lengths to which schools will go to win.

The biggest gap between football players and students as a whole occurred at the University of Florida, where players scored 346 points lower than the school’s overall student body. That’s larger than the difference in scores between typical students at the University of Georgia and Harvard University.

FOOTBALL SAT SCORES:
THE TOP 10
School, Average
Georgia Tech, 1028
Oregon State, 997
Michigan, 997
Virginia, 993
Purdue, 974
Indiana, 973
Hawaii, 968
California, 967
Colorado, 966
Iowa, 964


THE BOTTOM 10
School, Average
Oklahoma State, 878
Louisville, 878
Memphis, 890
Florida, 890
Texas Tech, 901
Arkansas, 910
Texas A&M, 911
Mississippi State, 911
Washington State, 916
Michigan State, 917

Nationwide, football players average 220 points lower on the SAT than their classmates — and men’s basketball players average seven points less than football players.

Those figures come from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution study of 54 public universities, including the members of the six major Bowl Championship Series conferences and other schools whose teams finished the 2007-08 season ranked among the football or men’s basketball top 25.

While it’s commonly known that admission standards are different for athletes, the AJC study quantifies how wide the gap is between athletes and the general student body at major universities.

Georgia Tech’s football players had the nation’s best average SAT score, 1028 of a possible 1600, and best average high school GPA, 3.39 of a possible 4.0 in the core curriculum. But Tech’s football players still scored 315 SAT points lower on average than their classmates.

At the University of Georgia, the average football SAT was 949, which is 239 points behind the average for an undergraduate student at Georgia — and 79 points behind Tech’s football average. The Bulldogs’ average high school GPA was 2.77, or 45th out of 53 teams for which football GPAs were available. Their SAT average ranked them 22nd.

Nationwide, coaches who would never offer a scholarship to a player who was 6 inches shorter or half a second slower than other prospects routinely recruit players whose standardized test scores suggest they’re at a competitive disadvantage in the classroom.

It’s the price of winning.

“If you’re going to mount a competitive program in Division I-A, and our institution is committed to do that, some flexibility in admissions of athletes is going to take place,” said Tom Lifka, chairman of the committee that handles athlete admissions at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Every institution I know in the country operates in the same way. It may or may not be a good thing, but that’s the way it is.”

UCLA, which has won more NCAA championships in all sports than any other school, had the biggest gap between the average SAT scores of athletes in all sports and its overall student body, at 247 points.

Administrators such as Lifka say the SAT gap between athletes and non-athletes is the price of fielding a team, and they argue what’s important is that large numbers of their scholarship athletes earn degrees. Critics say athletes who arrive on campus unprepared to compete academically get shuffled off to easy majors and unchallenging courses and don’t receive much of an education.


Questions about fairness

“The problem is there’s a huge world of Mickey Mouse courses and special curriculums that athletes are steered into,” said Murray Sperber, a visiting professor in the University of California’s graduate school of education and the author of four books about college athletics and college life. “The problem is there are many athletes graduating from schools who are semiliterate.”

Who gets hurt? Former Princeton University President William Bowen points to the students the colleges would have admitted if they hadn’t enrolled less qualified athletes.

“There are grounds for concern,” Bowen said. “Places at a lot of these schools are precious things. To have them allocated this way raises troubling questions about fairness, about taking advantage of educational opportunity.”

But Georgia Tech men’s basketball coach Paul Hewitt says he and other coaches are able to go beyond test scores to find recruits who can succeed in school while also having the talent to play at a high level.

Hewitt says the only fair comparison is between athletes and other students with similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Seen that way, he argues, athletics programs perform very well. Black athletes, for example, graduate at higher rates than black students as a whole.

“To insinuate that athletics has caused this problem of poor graduation rates [among black students] is wrong,” Hewitt said.

The Journal-Constitution obtained the test scores and other academic data from reports each major college athletics department is required to file with the NCAA, college sports’ governing body. The NCAA considers the reports confidential; the Journal-Constitution obtained them under state public record laws.

The reports are required only once in 10 years; the Journal-Constitution requested the data from the most recent report filed by each school.

The data from the University of Georgia are for the freshman classes of 1997, 1998 and 1999. The university does not have more recent information, athletics department spokesman Claude Felton said. The data from Georgia Tech are for the freshman classes of 2003, 2004 and 2005.

The differences in the age of the data make comparisons among the schools imperfect, but there are two reasons to think they’re still noteworthy. First, there’s little difference on average between the figures for the schools with the oldest data and those with the newest. Second, each school reported figures for three consecutive freshman classes, and the average change in the football team’s SAT scores was less than three points between a school’s oldest class and its most recent. Twenty-seven schools improved their average football SAT; 26 didn’t. Also, regardless of the differences between individual schools, some universal truths emerged:

• All 53 schools for which football SAT scores were available had at least an 88-point gap between team members’ average score and the average for the student body.

• Schools with the highest admissions standards, such as Georgia Tech; the University of Virginia; the University of California, Berkeley; UCLA; and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had the biggest gaps between the SAT averages for athletes and the overall student body.

• Football players performed 115 points worse on the SAT than male athletes in other sports.

• The differences between athletes’ and non-athletes’ SAT scores was less than half as big for women (73 points) as for men (170).

• Many schools routinely used a special admissions process to admit athletes who did not meet the normal entrance requirements. More than half of scholarship athletes at the University of Georgia, the University of Wisconsin, Clemson University, UCLA, Rutgers University, Texas A&M University and Louisiana State University were special admits.

“If the university says they’d help us meet team needs, that’s as important as finding an oboist for the orchestra,” said Nancy McDuff, the University of Georgia’s associate vice president for admissions and enrollment management.

Special admissions

The numbers, however, show special admissions exceptions are used far more often for athletes than oboists. At Georgia, for instance, 73.5 percent of athletes were special admits compared with 6.6 percent of the student body as a whole.

The University of Oklahoma and the University of Florida, whose football teams play Jan. 8 for the national championship, ranked near the bottom in standardized test scores. Florida’s freshman football classes of 2002-04 ranked 50th in average score out of 53 schools for which football SAT averages were available, and Oklahoma’s freshman football classes of 2001-03 ranked 42nd. Florida’s football players ranked last in average high school GPA, at 2.54. The average for all football players in the study was 2.93.

This season is typical. Five of the last seven public universities to win college football’s national championship ranked among the study’s bottom 20 in football SAT scores.

It’s true not just in big-time college sports but even in the Ivy League. Football players in the Ivies’ 1995 freshman class scored 144 points lower on average than other Ivy League men, according to Bowen’s book “Reclaiming the Game.”

The key question, Lifka said, is whether schools admit only athletes who have a reasonable chance to succeed academically. Seventy percent of UCLA athletes graduate within six years of enrollment, according to the latest figures reported by the NCAA. Nationally, the figure for athletes is 64 percent, two points higher than for all students, though athletes in the high-profile sports fared worse. Division I-A football players were six points behind the rate for all students, and men’s basketball players were 13 points behind.

Lifka said his 26 years of experience working with athletic admissions have shown him high school GPAs do a much better job than test scores in predicting athletes’ college success. Coaches and athletes say a player’s attitude toward school and willingness to put in the effort matter as much as anything.

“If the teacher can teach it, I can learn it,” said Calvin Booker, a senior quarterback who transferred from Auburn University to Georgia Tech two years ago.

Even Sperber, a critic of the college athletics system, says the test scores in the Journal-Constitution study should not feed a dumb jock stereotype. Instead, he said, the scores reflect the students’ background and their focus on sports over academics.

“I met very, very few certifiably dumb jocks,” Sperber said, adding that athletes whose athletics careers were over proved to be some of his best students. “The discipline they had learned in sports they finally could apply full time,” he said.

NCAA President Myles Brand said the big question isn’t whether athletes are as qualified as other students when they enroll but whether, given help, they can obtain degrees. “What you are really looking for is whether the student-athletes who are being accepted have the capability of graduating from that institution with the academic support they have available,” Brand said.

Schools make the call

The NCAA leaves that calculation to its member schools, though various reforms over the past 25 years set minimum standards for freshman eligibility. Brand said it’s not up to the NCAA to regulate how many admissions exceptions a school grants recruited athletes and how much of a gap there can be between athletes’ academic qualifications and those of other students.

“Admission standard is entirely the province of the school,” he said.

Brand is concerned enough about the numbers of special admissions that he is instituting a program to alert college presidents whose schools grant an unusually high number of exceptions.

The decision how far to go in lowering admissions standards for athletes varies considerably from school to school. It can be a challenge to avoid a race to the bottom.

“We go out on the field and get beaten by people we couldn’t admit,” said Charles Young, former president of the University of Florida and former chancellor of UCLA. “It creates strong pressures to go [to rival schools’ admissions standards], and there have to be very strong countervailing pressures to avoid going there.”

One observer says the Journal-Constitution figures show current university policies are less about admitting only qualified students and more about lowering standards for athletes and then dealing with the consequences.

“They’re saying we’ll take just about anybody as long as we can get them through,” said Allen Sack, director of the University of New Haven’s Institute for Sport Management and a former University of Notre Dame football player. “They’re betting what they can do is they can get anyone through school if they get the right kind of counseling.”

How we got the story

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution gathered the information for this project via public records requests to every public university that competes in a Bowl Championship Series conference or finished in the 2007-08 season’s football or men’s basketball Top 25s. Once every 10 years, each NCAA member school is required to undergo an athletics certification process. The SAT and core GPA data presented here came from reports the universities filed as part of that process.

A few universities are so open about their athletics departments’ performance that they publish the report containing their SAT and GPA data on their Web sites. Others, such as Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh, refused to provide it. The University of Kansas and West Virginia University said their most recent NCAA certification self-study did not include the information.

The SAT scores in this study are on the 1600-point scale that predates the addition of an SAT writing component. For schools that reported ACT scores, we derived comparable SAT scores using the NCAA’s conversion chart. Some schools refused to provide men’s basketball SAT scores on the grounds it would violate the privacy rights of individual athletes. Kansas State University did not provide the AJC any sport-by-sport data.

Private schools were not included in this project because they are not subject to public records laws. The NCAA does not release the school-by-school information; it considers it confidential.